Why does this thing have 9 pin serial?

bruceb

Diamond Member
Aug 20, 2004
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Good to have, as when you want to connect to Cisco equipment for provisioning with a laptop, you need a serial port. Sometimes, the USB to Serial adapters, just will not do the job. And if you use equipment, like Smart Card (Direct TV or Dish) type cards or equipment that can read / write to Credit Card mag stripes (for things like MC, Visa or card access systems) quite often, they require a real serial type interface to work with them.
 

crashtestdummy

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2010
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My lab has a lot of lab equipment that is 15+ years old but would cost six figures to replace even now. Said equipment tends to use serial interfaces to interact with the host PC. I'm sure I could replace the necessary components to get me a USB interface, but that's still a lot more expensive than buying a computer with a serial port.
 

lakedude

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2009
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Good to have, as when you want to connect to Cisco equipment
^ This

Once a Cisco Hub/Switch/Router has an IP you can communicate via the network but for the original setup (or certain other fancy things) you need a serial connection.

It does not need to be a laptop however a laptop with a serial port is handier for this sort of thing.
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
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There are a lot of mini ITX boards geared more toward industrial/embedded applications, where serial interfaces are still used quite a bit.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
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www.anyf.ca
Yeah serial ports are nice for lot of stuff. Great for home automation stuff too. Though most boards like Arduino use USB and have a built in serial emulator anyway.
 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
17,168
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Many devices use serial. I am thinking some projectors use it. Some scientific sensors also use it. Anyway that is specific to that particular motherboard. There is probably someone wondering if you can get one with a Parrallel port to hook up a joystick.

I have seen this case before:
http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure

You could just use a different motherboard with better options. That thing does not have very good cooling to stuff an i7 into it.
 
Last edited:
Feb 25, 2011
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Dual NICs, no DisplayPort, VGA, 2x Serial, and a Q77 chipset? (Only one that supports vPro.)

10y2842.png


Or at least the kind of computer that will spend the next decade stuck in a cabinet to run a 20-year-old CNC machine. I'm surprised they didn't have a parallel port on there instead of DVI.
 

vbuggy

Golden Member
Nov 13, 2005
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There are a lot of mini ITX boards geared more toward industrial/embedded applications, where serial interfaces are still used quite a bit.

This, I'm guessing it's aimed specifically at said market
Dual NICs, no DisplayPort, VGA, 2x Serial, and a Q77 chipset? (Only one that supports vPro.)

10y2842.png


Or at least the kind of computer that will spend the next decade stuck in a cabinet to run a 20-year-old CNC machine. I'm surprised they didn't have a parallel port on there instead of DVI.

Not really. For some reason a lot of stuff which used to use parallel have switched to USB or others a long time ago. Serial refuses to go away.